Bligh ‘on track’ for 100,000 jobs

The Bligh government is confident it will reach its target of creating 100,000 new jobs this parliamentary term, despite a downgrade of its economic forecasts in last week’s mid-year budget update.

With less than two months until the third anniversary of the Labor government, Queensland Premier
Anna Bligh
and Treasurer
Andrew Fraser
still need to create 7500 jobs to meet their 2009 election promise.

Employment figures for December to be released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics on Thursday will give a good indication of whether the goal is likely to be met.

Mr Fraser said the government was on track to achieve its ambitious goal, even though the slowdown in global markets had impacted on Queensland’s economic outlook.

“We are 100 per cent committed to achieving that target," Mr Fraser said. “There’ll be [ABS] numbers in January and then each month after that. I expect the government’s on track to finish that target."

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The jobs target has fluctuated wildly over the past year, but economists have become increasingly sceptical about employment prospects nationally for the rest of 2011-12 as Europe’s debt crisis worsens.

Queensland had the highest unemployment rate in the country in November, at a seasonally adjusted 5.8 per cent, according to the ABS.

This was well above the other resource state, Western Australia (4.3per cent), as well as NSW (5.2 per cent) and Victoria (5.5 per cent). The Queensland mid-year budget update released last week revised business investment up from 27.5 per cent to 35 per cent.

But it downgraded the state’s forecast employment growth from 3 per cent to 1.5 per cent in 2011-12, and increased its estimated annualised unemployment rate from 5 per cent to 5.5 per cent.

ABS figures earlier this month showed job vacancies fell by 6 per cent in November last year.

But Mr Fraser said yesterday’s ANZ jobs advertisement data, which showed a 3.8 per cent rise in December, was further evidence of the state’s slowly improving job market.

“The fact that job ads were up in Queensland is another indicator of the general build-up in investor and employer confidence across the state," he said.

Opposition Treasury spokesman Tim Nicholls said the government’s 100,000 target was not genuine because it included part-time workers. Of the 92,500 jobs created since March 2009, only 51,300 had been full-time jobs.

“Labor are 48,700 full-time jobs short of their election promise and their attempts to claim part-time work as breadwinner jobs shows how out of touch they are with Queensland families struggling to cope with the increasing cost of living," Mr Nicholls said.

He said the most recent ABS figures showed 144,100 Queenslanders were unemployed – 28,300 more than at the last state election.